Dance of the Red Death (Masque of the Red Death)

by Bethany Griffin

  The maids dress Mother in a gown that is the opposite of mine, black with blue accents. Her mask also has peacock feathers. She considers it with distaste.

  The small maid leans close to me, applying eye makeup.

  “We can hide the prince’s niece,” she whispers. “She must act like she is going to the ball, and we’ll take her to a hidden room. Couples sometimes use them, but not until much later. What about your handsome friend?”

  “Can you take me to him before the ball?” I ask. I know it is too much to ask, and her eyes go wide, but then she smiles.

  “Do you have something to bribe the guards with?”

  “I have a diamond,” I say. “But only one. They will have to find some way to split the wealth.”

  Elliott would be furious. But I have nothing else to give.

  She grips the seam of my beautiful dress and pulls. The fabric separates, leaving a gaping hole.

  “Her dress is ripped,” she announces. “The seamstresses are all at work downstairs. I’ll take her to see if one of them can mend it.” And then she’s pulling me through the corridor, down three flights of stairs, conferring with two more maids, and finally I’m handing Elliott’s ring to a guard. The diamond flashes, and the men are suitably impressed.

  “Through here,” the guard says. “You’ll have to speak to him through the door.”

  The last time Will and I spoke through bars, I was on the inside, and he was walking away from me. This door is heavy oak, and the bars are so high that I can barely stand tall enough to see through them.

  “Will?” I ask.

  “Araby?” His voice is full of disbelief. All I can see in the darkness is the impression of his shape, his dark hair. I sink to the floor and press my face against the door.

  Chains scrape across stone as he moves closer too.

  “We don’t have much time,” I say. “When the ball begins, if someone lets you go, can you take April back to the city?”

  “I will take you anywhere.”

  “Not me, just April.” Before he can ask questions or argue, I rush on. “I have . . . unfinished business. But I will join you later if I can.”

  “Don’t ask me to leave you.” His voice sounds harsh. What if I can’t talk him into going?

  “April is dying. You have to get her to Malcontent. I know it seems wrong, but he is the only one who can help her. And then you have to tell Elliott that the pump is in the manor house in the swamp. Please.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a long time.

  “You owe me,” I say finally.

  “I’ve been trying to repay—I’m no Elliott—”

  “I don’t want you to be Elliott. One of those is enough.”

  He laughs. The sound of it makes me stronger.

  “And I don’t want Elliott,” I whisper.

  Again, he doesn’t say anything. Did he hear me? “Will?”

  The tiny maid gestures that it is time to go.

  “Will, please,” I say.

  I stand and press the half-empty vial from Father through the bars. “Drink this.”

  And then the girl is pulling me away. “The guard changes just after the ball begins,” she whispers. “We can get him out then.”

  We leave the corridor to find a seamstress, who frowns at the rip in my dress but sews it up deftly and sends us on our way.

  “Do you love him?” the maid asks once we are alone.

  “Yes.” And if I survive the night, I will tell him so.

  Before I reach Mother’s suite I pass an enormous mirror. The back of my dress plunges indecently low and my wound is only partially healed, still red and puckered. The rope burns from last night are red and inflamed, all around my throat. There is no way to hide either.

  Somewhere in the house, a clock marks the hour.

  The ball will begin soon.

  The moment I enter Mother’s sitting room, I know that something is wrong. Neither she nor April is there. Worried that the prince swept them away while I was gone, I hurry to check the bedchamber.

  Mother sits by the bed, holding April’s hand. She looks up as I enter, but April doesn’t move. She’s sprawled across the bed in her ball gown, all silver and gold, and the purple of her bruises.

  Mother holds my gaze. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  April is so still. She isn’t going to escape with Will. My father can’t make her better, and neither can her own. Not now.

  I shudder and, though Mother reaches for me, I collapse to the floor and hide my face in the blankets.

  “Araby,” Mother says in a broken whisper. “You don’t have your mask. Not the one to stop the contagion.”

  In my grief I don’t care, but she pulls me back.

  I catch sight of myself in the mirror, my eyes wide and wild. The wound pulses red around my throat. I look back to April’s lifeless body.

  “She put on more eye makeup.”

  “Apparently what the maids did wasn’t . . . dramatic enough.” Mother takes a silk coverlet and pulls it over April. “The prince is planning to escort us to the ball.” The sadness in her voice has been replaced by fear.

  Everything crashes down on me. The prince is coming. But I won’t let him have her, let him throw her away with the other victims of this terrible plague.

  I’ll get through tonight, somehow. I’ll manage to get April back to Elliott, in her ball gown. He’ll have her buried in some ornate grave. He’ll commission a statue, something garish with weeping angels. Tears start at the corners of my eyes, but I don’t let myself cry.

  “We’ll tell him that April went to her mother, to show off her dress,” Mother says, and she guides me to the door.

  “Wait.” I hurry to the bureau. My hands are shaking as I open the drawer for my ivory-handled knife. I realize, too late, that I have no boot to place it in. My shoes are elegant slippers. But I need it, so I take two of Mother’s silk scarves and tie it, with shaking hands, to my thigh.

  Then I give one last look to April, hidden, shapeless beneath the blanket, before joining Mother in the other room.

  She shuts the door to the bedroom gently.

  Finally I’m able to ask, “Did she suffer?”

  “No. She said she wanted to lie down for a moment, she made a great show of arranging her hair so she wouldn’t muss it. And then it seemed she fell asleep. I went to sit beside her, and realized she wasn’t breathing. She just—”

  “I wish I had been here,” I whisper. Mother, cradling her injured hand, looks away from me. “And I wish I had been there with you when Finn died.”

  I have a feeling that at this moment, she will answer anything I ask. “Why did Father release the Red Death?” I watch the emotions cross her face. She drops her hands, and for a brief moment I think that I was wrong, that Mother is going to treat me like a child. Lie. Suggest that Father didn’t do it. But she doesn’t.

  “Do you remember the night you and April went to the club . . . you were wearing a long black dress, with a corset you had just dyed?”

  I remember everything about that night. Will testing me, saying I should wear the silver eye makeup. Elliott following me through the women’s powder room, offering me his silver syringe.

  “April brought you home. She had one of her servants carry you in. For a moment, we thought that you were sick, or dead. He’d been trying so hard to protect you from the prince. But he couldn’t protect you from yourself. And he couldn’t stand that. He couldn’t stand the world we lived in, and he blamed himself for everything. Including your misery and your pain.”

  “He released the Red Death that night?”

  “That was when he began to talk of it again. Then, when you were gone, when everything went to hell, I think Prospero called his bluff. But he wasn’t bluffing.”

  My face feels stiff and frozen. “He asked me, after I returned, if I could be happy in this world.”

  “And what did you say?” She’s whispering now.

  “I didn’t answer.”

/>   Mother looks away from me, and I’m ashamed. Why couldn’t I offer Father something more?

  But no, I won’t hold myself responsible for my father’s actions. Prospero was the one who used Father to start the first contagion. Who killed my brother. And then, instead of finding a cure, my gentle, loving father gave up on people. On humanity. On everything.

  The door to our room is slightly ajar. The maid didn’t lock it when she brought me back from visiting Will.

  I could make a run for it now, could race down the corridor holding my gown up to my knees so that I don’t fall. I could go back to Will. But Mother is holding tight to my hand, and she is the only one who understands, at least a little. She found me, holding Finn’s hand. And tonight she held April’s, even though April meant nothing to her. I have to succeed tonight. I saved those little girls. I refuse to give up, to make the same horrible mistake my father did. Instead, I will change the course of our world.

  “Maybe you can escape,” I whisper. I could send her to Will, even without April.

  “It’s too late,” Mother says. And she is right.

  A shadow falls over the threshold, and there’s the prince. He notices the open door, and his eyebrows go up.

  “I come bearing gifts,” he says. As if he never tried to hang me, or to crush my mother’s hand.

  He’s carrying three boxes. From one he extracts a circlet of glistening stones. Diamonds for my mother. A fortune in one velvet-lined box. I can’t watch him fasten them at her throat. I don’t want to see him touching her.

  “Come here, Miss Araby Worth,” he says to me. Sapphires flash as he takes them from the box. Ostentatious oversized blue stones, surrounded by tiny, sharp diamonds that reflect every light in the room. The prince seems to take pleasure in placing the gemstone collar directly over the rope burns at my throat. I don’t give him the additional pleasure of seeing how it hurts.

  His gift does not hide my injury. If anything, the necklace accentuates it. I want to tear it off and throw it away, but of course I don’t dare.

  The prince knows how I feel. He’s smiling, and I hate him.

  He holds the third box for a moment. I wait for him to ask where April is, but instead he says, “It’s almost time.” And taps his fingers together in a gesture that is, perhaps, supposed to indicate glee. “My most lavish party,” he adds. “I’ve been planning this for years. I hope you enjoy yourselves.”

  He reaches out to kiss my mother’s hand, lingering over her maimed finger. My stomach lurches as his lips touch her skin, and he looks up to meet my eyes.

  Then two of his guards enter the room. Each of them takes one of Mother’s arms, and they lead her away. She gives me a reassuring smile as they practically drag her out.

  “When you locate my niece, bring her to me,” he tells them as they are leaving. And then his attention is focused completely on me.

  “I’d like you to walk with me,” he says. “Because you and I are going to have a little fun. Do you like to play games?”

  “No.”

  But of course it doesn’t matter. He hands me a black satin bag lined with velvet. It is held shut with a heavy silk cord that I can wrap around my wrist to hold.

  “The ball is held in seven interconnected rooms,” he tells me. “In each room, I have hidden something that has a special significance to you. If you can find what I have hidden, and place the items in this bag before the clock counts down the hours, then you win.”

  “What do I win?” My voice has never sounded so cold and uncaring. Not even in the moments when I tried to punish Mother for all of the slights I imagined. For leaving me alone, for Finn’s death.

  “My prizes are always worth winning.” He puts one hand under my chin and raises it so my eyes meet his cold, dead ones. I’ve made a terrible mistake. “At the end of the game, if you’ve succeeded, I’ll let you choose. Your mother, or your beau. Don’t worry. If you leave her with me, I’ll take good care of her. I won’t promise the same for the boy.”

  My hatred for him chokes me. Did he know my plan? Have the maids gotten Will out, or could he still be a prisoner?

  “I’ll play your game,” I say through gritted teeth. But I won’t choose. I won’t have to, because somehow, before this night is over, I will kill him.

  He puts out his arm, and reluctantly I take it, waiting for his answer. As we glide through the corridor, courtiers move out of our way. We pass mirror after mirror. I refuse to look into any of them. He smirks. He never doubted that I would play. I don’t want to see his gloating face, and I don’t want to see myself, not in this costume he created for me. Not when April will never wear a beautiful dress again.

  Instead I study the other guests in their finery. How odd to see their mouths but not the expression around their eyes. It’s the very opposite of everything I’m used to, and I can’t read anyone. I am completely isolated in this throng of revelers.

  And I’m going to have to accomplish this task, his so-called game, alone.

  “How do you know seven things that are important to me?” I ask. “You barely know me.”

  He laughs. “But I know your mother very well, and she loves you. I’ve been collecting information about you for some time.”

  “Then you should know that I don’t like games.” I didn’t think, when I tied the knife to my leg, how impossible it would be to retrieve. If I could get it, I would stab him right here. I would slip the blade up under his ribs or into his gut like Elliott showed me.

  “And you should know that I don’t care in the least what you like or don’t like,” the prince answers, his eyes gleaming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WE FOLLOW SATIN DRESSES AND JEWELED MASKS to carved wooden doors standing open at the top of a staircase. I hesitate only for a moment before I step over the threshold.

  “Have fun,” Prospero says, and gestures for me to descend before disappearing into the crowd.

  This place is dark and deep. Perhaps what Elliott said about his uncle importing this castle stone by stone is true. The walls are a blue deeper than my dress. They feel like they might close in and crush me. Though the ceilings are high, my impression of the room is subterranean, as if we are in one of the dungeons, if Prospero hadn’t flooded them.

  A thumping drum passes for music, and people press in from every side. One thousand guests were invited to this ball, and it seems like all of them are in this room. Dancers wear primitive masks and costumes. I’m not sure if they are guests or were just placed here to entertain.

  I force a smile because, in this mask, everyone can see my mouth. The sapphires at my throat are cool, but not cold enough to soothe the throb of the rope burns. At least, in this room lit only by torches, the welts won’t be so noticeable.

  The doors at the top of the stairway slam shut. No one else can enter. Drums throb. Faces are obscured. A girl steps on my foot. The pain is sharp, as if her slippers are adorned with spikes. Torch smoke burns my eyes.

  I wish I understood Prospero’s game. What kinds of objects am I looking for? What might Mother have told him about me?

  Across the room, there’s a deep shadow between two torches. Since the room is mostly an open floor, those shadows are one of the only places that Prospero could have hidden anything. I force myself to move, following the light of the torches.

  But the shadow is only a bare, rough wall.

  I feel my way along the walls, bits of blue paint flaking off under my fingers. This room is dark. How am I supposed to find—

  The wall ends. Turning a corner, I come upon an alcove where dainty feet dangle before my eyes.

  The maids who did my hair, who offered to help me, swing from nooses, limp. I swallow hard. They can’t have been dead long. About the same amount of time as April.

  I whip around. Surely the prince is watching me, gloating at the horror he orchestrated, showing me that he learned my plan to free April and Will. He can’t hurt April, but what might he have done to Will?

  Scanni
ng the room for some evidence that he is watching, all I see around me are scantily dressed dancers, some writhing together on a raised dais while others whirl about the dance floor.

  I force myself to look back. I killed these girls. I asked them for help, and somehow he found out. The little one is in the center, her serviceable boots a bit higher than the rest. I take two steps forward. Then a third. A deep-blue ribbon is tied around her ankle. Something hangs from it. Two more steps, and I recognize it. Elliott’s silver syringe.

  Special significance.

  Mother didn’t tell Prospero about this. She doesn’t know.

  But there is no doubt that it’s meant for me.

  And to take it, I am going to have to touch this poor dead girl. I brace myself and stand on my toes, reaching up, fumbling, ashamed that I am allowing Prospero to force me into this horrible game.

  The syringe is cool in my hand. I stare down at it, realizing that I have never held it before. Elliott always handled it as he injected oblivion into my veins.

  The music stops.

  As horrible as the pounding drum was, hearing the whisper of the dead girls’ petticoats in the sudden silence is worse.

  I back out of the alcove and slip the syringe into the bag.

  From someplace deep in the castle, a clock bell tolls. The dancers blink. Someone bumps into me, and one of the sapphires on my choker tears into my throat. Hot droplets of blood fall down onto my dress, but instead of soaking into the heavy satin, they roll off, disappearing to the floor.

  The clock thunders seven times.

  Then the drums pound, and the primal rhythm begins again.

  I study the position of the torches. Another set, barely visible across the room, gives the same impression that the ones I’m standing beneath did. They’ve been placed at intervals to create the illusion that something lies between them.

  So perhaps the real door is not marked at all. I look to where the shadows are the deepest, and after turning nearly in a complete circle and running my hands over the dark blue of the walls, I finally spot the doorway and pass through to the next room.